MCS Staff & Community Black History Month Community Book Study

MCS Staff & Community Black History Month Community Book Study

Posted on 02/13/2018

Join MCS staff this month in reading Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum's national bestseller that is celebrating its 20th anniversary. On February 28th in the MHS Learning Commons, come together for a community conversation about this important book, race, and racism.Read the interview with Dr. Tatum in the Atlantic.

"In 1997, Beverly Daniel Tatum, one of the country’s foremost authorities on the psychology of racism, answered a recurring question that surfaced in her work with teachers, administrators, and parent groups: Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? The result was a critically acclaimed book of the same name that gave readers—numbering in the hundreds of thousands—a starting point to demystify conversations about race, better understand the concept of racial identity, and communicate across racial and ethnic divides.

Now two decades later, the black kids are still sitting together. And Tatum has returned with a revised and updated 20th-anniversary edition of her national bestseller that publishes today. One aspect that has changed dramatically since the original release of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race are America’s demographics. Latinos and Asian Americans are the largest and fastest-growing populations of color, respectively, with children of color for the first time outnumbering white children in public schools. Additionally, the backlash against the election of the first black president, the continuing segregation of schools, and highly visible incidents of police violence seem to belie the claim of a "post-racial society”—making Tatum’s perspectives on effective dialogue about race and racism especially relevant.
Tatum recently shared some thoughts with The Atlantic on why conversations about race remain vexing and what can happen when educators and parents avoid those conversations."